It’s always fun to look through your passport and see the stamps from various airports. And to look at your friends’ passports and see where they’ve been.

But there seems to be no practical value to the stamps. All airports now scan your passport and the whole system is computerized. I’ve never seen a border official actually look at my stamps.

I suspect it’s tradition at this point.

Just as reading long letters of famous historical figures is good fun but will not be an option for future generations reading about us, I suspect stamps in passports will be a thing of the past soon enough as well….

Always interesting to hear and analyze how non-natives speak the English language. What’s difficult? What do they mess up?

One random observation: the word “clever.” Most fluent English speakers I know don’t use the word “clever” very often, certainly not as a catch-all compliment for intelligence or savviness. If anything, “clever” can have a slightly negative connotation — like sneaky. Yet many folks in Latin America use “clever” very often and in broad contexts.

Second random observation: “this” and “that.” Neither is technically grammatically better than the other, but you can hear it when it doesn’t sound right.

Here’s a little thing third world countries could do which would vastly improve the travel experience for foreigners: create a formal taxi line and enforce it.

In every poor country I’ve been to the airport scene is always the same. You land, go through customs, and then take one step outside and are hounded by taxi drivers. Some legal, some illegal, all shouting "taxi! taxi! taxi!".

The most frustrating experience I’ve had was in Dalian, China. There the illegal taxis swarm and won’t leave you. I had to physically push one guy away and he nonetheless kept following my every step trying to get me to hire him.

In Liberia, Costa Rica, you step out of the airport and before you know it you’re inundated by "taxi! taxi!". When I waited to pick Laura up at the airport, I watched dozens of passengers exit the airport. Each time, without exception, they walk out with a smile on their face, and within seconds, at seeing the mob scene of taxi drivers, their smile turns to deer-in-headlights or general fear / nervousness.

Why would you want that to be the first impression visitors have of your country?

I’ve never been to one, but I now know two people who went to American travel doctors before going to Latin America. Of course they give you every medicine they can think of and tell you to avoid everything and anything once in the region.

A particularly amusing fun fact was the travel doctor a friend visited before coming to Costa Rica had only been abroad once in her life, to London!

My approach is to follow the CDC / State Dept recommendations on malaria, avoid tap water, and be smart about other types of food. Get your shots, etc. But do your own research and take action that will keep you healthy and make you less nervous (sometimes people say you don’t need to take malaria medicine in certain places like Guanacaste in Costa Rica — but I’d rather assuage any nervousness when I get molested by mosquitoes which inevitably happens).

Just don’t outsource this process to a "travel doctor"!

In Europe, since people live at home with their parents till later in life, there’s many more people making out / kissing in public. Ie, they don’t want to go back home, so they do it in public.